Brittany

Krystal’s trying to start a fire in a shattered Bradford pear, on a median. Brittany drags the hood she’s salvaged over, trying to cut the wind; there’s already gravel pinging off it.

“How long we got?” asks Krystal.

Brittany guesses the distance between sun and Steeple. “Half-hour,” she says. “Maybe twenty minutes. Can you hurry?”

“You want to find tinder on asphalt?” Krystal snaps.

The great shadow of noon is creeping toward them, and there are howls nearby. Not wolves. Brittany looks bitterly up at the brilliant, mocking spire, deceptively far away across the parking desert: Overland Baptist. Goal, and doom.